


This House Is A Magic Show

by orphan_account



Category: White Collar
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Magic, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-09-16
Updated: 2011-09-20
Packaged: 2017-10-23 18:58:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/253804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a good night, a profitable one but things still aren't quite right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AU where Kate is still dead (for suspicious reasons) Neal, Alex and Mozzie are con artists (as per usual) and travelling magicians and Peter and El are still pretty much themselves.

They're not really big enough to be called a troupe, three people does not make a troupe (neither did four people but they don't talk about that). They're not quite a band either, band doesn't suit them at all.

They are just.,..them. Travellers, performers, people who were meant to entertain.

They preform in clubs and bars you would think wouldn't hire them. That's Neal's doing, he can be very convincing when he wants to be. Alex draws in the crowd with her smile and her tricks and, of course, her breasts. None of them are shy about their gifts, natural or supernatural. Mozzie sets everything up and makes sure that nothing can go wrong. He's vital to pulling things off, even if he doesn't draw in the crowd.

And then they put on a show.

It varies from night to night, depending on who's bored with what and what they're in the mood to do. Sometimes Alex cuts off her hands and sometimes Neal steals all the wallets in the room. Sometimes there are animals out from nowhere and sometimes there are more of them than there should be.

It all depends really, all depends on the mood.

And really, it's not the show that the people care about. It's the charm. Neal and Alex are great on stage together and Mozzie has his own strange appeal. He can be funny and wry and people like him more than one would think. Together the three of them put on a good show.

Then, at the end of the night they clean up and return to their hotel room, that much richer and that much less bored.

This time, it's a room that Neal managed to get them with a smile and a wave of his hand. It barely took any magic at all to get the woman to give him the keys but they're as much cons as they are practitioners.

Alex flops on the bed, her eyes closing. It's nice, doing their thing, pulling off shows, but it feels good to lay down too.

Mozzie sits at the table, his expression actually relaxed now that they were safely within the hotel room walls.

Neal remains standing.

"We need to do another show tomorrow," he says with a sigh and a tension in his voice that both of the other two recognize on cue.

Mozzie looks up. "That wasn't enough?"

"Not really," Neal admits, the frustration clear in his voice.. "It's still there. It wants out, Moz. It's under my skin."

Alex sighs, rolling onto her stomach to peer at Neal. "Look," she says. "We'll do a few street shows in the next couple of days. Will that work?"

Neal shrugs, his head leaning back to lightly hit the wall. "I don't know," he admits. "It's driving me nuts. I feel like I can't do enough, like it's just going to keep building and building until there's nothing left but the damn magic."

"Well," Mozzie says with a very matter-of-fact tone. "If we don't keep moving, that's what's going to happen."

Neal swallows hard. "Thanks for that, Mozzie, I really needed that reminder right now."

"Happy to help," he says.

Alex rolls her eyes and throws a pillow at Mozzie. "Street shows,' she says again. "We'll work the city for a couple of days, maybe pull a real job or two, that should settle the magic. If not we'll figure something out."

Neal sighs, closing his eyes and walking over to the bed, flopping down. "Yeah, okay. It's not like we can do anything else."

"Exactly," Alex says,. "So lighten up, Caffrey. We put on a good dhow tonight."

He grins a little. "We did, didn't we?"

Mozzie holds up the cash they managed to acquire. "Oh, I'd say we did."

The three of them just grin at each other, all thoughts of magic and power and everything else pushed out of their minds, if just for a moment.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neal, Alex and Mozzie work the streets but there's still dissatisfaction in the air.

It's harder to work a crowd on the street than it is to work one in a club. You're working for less money and the attention isn't only on you. It's a hard way to live, even harder if it's you're only way of getting any cash flow.

They've done it before though and they were good at it but they had certain things on their side that most people don't.

Alex draws them in, hopping on stairs and chairs and pitching like her life depended on it, the allure forced into her words. She drew them in with smaller tricks too, knowing who they were, pulling birds from her hair, doing whatever she thought would be interesting.

Neal was the main attraction, working the bigger tricks, burning off more energy. It was better for him to do that and be able to use part of that magic to keep the audience, the more he used, the better off he was and, in turn, the better off the rest of them were.

Mozzie did a little bit of everything, some tricks, some pitching and a little bit of collecting the money. He was the renaissance man amongst a trio of them, not that the other two didn't have their talents. He'd been doing this the longest though and knows bot his strengths and his weaknesses.

And all of it, the luring, the pitching, the tricks, it was all for the magic, the burn, the release of all the energy that got pent up inside them. They knew they had to work or they had to die. It was as simple as that. Kate proved to them that they didn't have a choice and they weren't going to lose anyone else to the magic, even if it meant working for it.

It just wasn't worth it.

So they keep up their acts, they preform feats no one thought possible and they let the world think that it's all an illusion. It doesn't matter to them if they think it's a trick. It makes no difference. What matters to them is the burn, the freedom, the release.

Afterwards, when they're in the same hotel room they had been in the night before (Neal got them another night with the last of his energy), Alex stretches out on the bed, looking tired but content.

"That good enough for you," she questions as Mozie settles at the table to sort through the money they made that day and Neal starts to strip so that he can get a shower.

"Yeah," he says with a shrug. "At least for now."

Alex arches a brow at him. "You want to do something bigger?" She smirks. "Or something more interesting. Which is it?"

""Maybe I want a break from the show," Neal counters.

Mozzie looks up. "Does this mean what I think it does?" His hands have stopped sorting through the money and it's clear that he's intrigued.

Neal grins. "I think it's been way too long since we've done something a little more interesting than magic shows, don't you?"

Alex and Mozzie look at each other, utterly ecstatic.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The planning stages

They decide on an art heist.

It's no surprise really. Alex can sell art, Neal likes art and Moz both likes _and_ can sell art if he's put in the position that he needs to make the arrangements. It's the most logical solution.

"You sure you want to do this," Alex asks at one point while they're still in the planning stages. She's exerting a little of her magic, making the pen write on its own and make the notes for her as she thinks of them.

Neal rolls his eyes at her. "Are you really asking me that?"

She grins. "I'm just making sure."

he smiles and it's reassuring. "I've missed this," he starts. "Shows are great. I love doing them, I love the attention but there's something to all this, the planning, the execution. It's a rush. You can't get it preforming, it's--"

Alex waves a hand, dismissing him. "I do this too, Neal, I know what you're talking about.

Mozzie looks up from what he's doing. "Are you two done waxing poetic about thievery? Because I'd like to think that's actually my job."

Neal rolls his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. Do you have the approach, Moz?"

He nods and starts to demonstrate. It's an easy job, easier than Neal would have preferred but still, it has enough risk that it makes him happy and he has to use his magic enough that it will burn it off for a while.

Alex looks on in approval, seeming to be fairly content with the whole thing as well. She likes the challenge yeah, but she also likes when they can get the job _done_ and not have it get botched up in the middle. She's had that happen to her one too many times for comfort.

The job itself is a simple one, getting into an art gallery, getting what they want, getting out. The security is good but not great, people take lunch at reasonable (and convenient) times and everything looks good.

"So," Neal says, looking over the plans with a careful eye. "This is it then?"

Mozzie nods. "Pretty much. This should get us in, get what we want and get us out without any issues."

"I like the 'without any issues' part." Alex says with a grin. "After the last job we pulled, I'd rather not play around with our chances."

"That was a freak incident," Mozzie points out. "We didn't know that they'd have anything there that could short out your magic."

Alex rolls her eyes. "Yeah well, thinking that I have an option open to me and then suddenly having that option snatched out from under me is not my definition of a smooth job. I want something simple and easy that will make us money."

Neal just rolls his eyes,. "I would ask where your sense of adventure is but I _do_ know it exists. You're just bitter."

"Bitter as hell," Alex says. "But if this goes well, I'll get over it."

Neal grins. "It'll be fine."  
]  
"You're still not saying it though," Alex points out.

Mozzie rolls his eyes. "Because he doesn't want to damn us."

Neal nods his head in agreement. "Exactly. I'm not screwing us over with a phrase."

Alex laughs , shaking her head at both of them. "Fine then, I'll say it. 'What can go wrong?"

Neal and Mozzie just sigh.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This don't go well but a new plan of action is formed

"Are we even going to talk about what happened back there," Neal questions when he, Mozzie and Alex get back to the safehouse. They didn't think it was entirely safe to go back to the hotel room at this point and didn't want to take any chances.

"No," Alex snaps, then she forces herself to take a breath. "I don't know." She looks stressed and tired and very, very uncomfortable. It's not a good look on her.

"I'll tell you what happened," Moz starts, leaning back against a wall. "We ran into something that shouldn't exist." He sounds confident in his words, which leave the other two just staring at him for a moment.

After a moment, Neal arches an eyebrow. "I didn't see any dragons while we were there, Moz." Granted, he could be wrong. Dragons have been known to hide in plain sight before. They were surprisingly good skin shifters.

"The woman," Mozzie explains. "The one who didn't take her break. She sto9pped us."

There has been one woman who hadn't left but they didn't think she would be a problem. She had been at the front of the gallery and was an easy distraction. Nothing should have gone wrong, she shouldn't have been a problem at all.

Alex looks at him like he was stupid, a look she was excellent at. "C'mon Mozzie, the neutrals are a myth, you know that. We need to figure out what actually happened so it doesn't go wrong again." She sounds rather insistent about this, something bout Neal and Mozzie note in her tone.

"Why is it a myth," Mozzie simply counters. "Because you don't want to believe it?" I've seen it before, they're real, rare but real."

Neal sits between them, turning the information around in his head. he's not about to dismiss the idea because well, they live in a strange, strange world. it is however, rather unlikely, as she's personally never ran into such a thing. Then again, Mozzie's been doing this longer than he has and he trusts him, even if he does have an...interesting view on the world sometimes.

"So, if what you're saying is true, she makes the magic null, right?" He knows the myths but he wants to make sure he's got it right.

Mozzie nods.

"But it's in our blood. How does that even work?" Neal questions. He's been looking for a way t0o counter the magic for years, ever since he found out that he had it. It's not that he doesn't love having his talents, they've come in handy more than once and he uses them on jobs more tan he probably should (as proven by today) but the chance of getting overwhelmed is always looming over his shoulder. If there was a better way to control it, if he could be near someone who had the chance of taming it, he wanted to know.

Mozzie shrugs. "Tell me how the magic works and I'll tell you how she can neutralize it."

Neal nods. "All right, Point."

"So," Alex says. "We just hit somewhere else and make sure that no one can short out our skills. That's simple."

Mozzie is about to say something but Neal cuts him off. "I think I want to meet her."

Alex and Mozzie stare at him.

"You're kidding," Alex says but she's sighing like she knows he's not. This is not the first thing something like this has happened.

"C'mon," Neal urges. This is fascinating. There's actually someone out there who can control the magic, make it stop. Maybe we...I don't know. Maybe we won't have to do shows anymo9re. Could you imagine it? Just doing jobs when we wanted and not when we had to? it could be great."

"You're not going to..." Mozzie looks down at a piece of paper in his hands. "Convert Elizabeth Burke into a life of crime, you do know that, right?"

Neal smiles, one that is absolutely winning. "And why not?"

Mozzie and Alex look at each other, then back at Neal.

"Point." They say in unison.


End file.
